Quirk

I got an email from Change.org today. (I get a lot of those, but this one is pretty bad.)

Content warning: racism, violence, extreme indifference.

( Read more... )

The PSA is this: Delaying the onset of puberty is, as far as we know, a harmless process that will do nothing irreversible. There is no reason to campaign against it.

Where this comes from:

Apparently I'm not the only one who is creeped out by a sudden rise in adults (who are not trans allies) talking about children who are transgender, particularly transsexual. I thought maybe I was imagining it.

Seriously, best article ever.

I would like to think this conversation should be a good thing, raising awareness and support for transsexual kids and their families. If people could just understand how much biological sex is determined by hormones, that would be a good start. Medicine can do awesome things if you're a teenager: in particular, you can pretty easily delay puberty for a couple of years until you decide which sex's hormones you want to take, and not suffer irreversible consequences. Ideally that means, for trans girls, they never have to have their voices change or develop facial hair; trans boys don't have to grow breasts; etc. Or they can allow those things to happen later.*

Of course, the more cis adults talk about it, the more likely it is that there could be restrictions placed against allowing kids to take hormone blockers. Some people are already framing the conversation as if kids are going to have sex reassignment surgery (SRS).** Seriously? People who are honestly worried about that should stop doctors from performing non-consensual genital surgery on intersex kids.

(Happy to discuss, clarify, etc. I won't bite.)

( footnotes )

I got this statement in my inbox today.

AFM - American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada
January 20, 2012

Joint Statement from AFM, AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, IBT and SAG Regarding the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the STOP Online Piracy Act (HR 3261)

( full text )

Apparently "You're receiving this email because you're a member, officer or otherwise affiliated with the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada". (Right, so of course I'm going to believe Internet censorship is a good idea, as long as only deserving organizations do it. Also of course, no self-respecting musician would ever want to have access to music without paying high prices for it. /snark)

If you haven't read the Tintin books, the Tintin movie probably comes off as amusing, hyperactive, fairly incoherent and certainly contrived in places, and yet fun to watch. Technically it's quite a feat, too: it's cartoonized, but more realistically than I've seen before, and according to Mom and Dad it uses real actors and captures their motions as was done with Gollum in Lord of the Rings. But, you should read some of the books first!

To a die-hard Tintin fan like I was as a child, it's like a brilliantly composed medley. It was mostly drawn from "Secret of the Unicorn", with a large chunk of "Crab with the Golden Claws" (these I believe are required reading for maximum enjoyment) and a few other references rather brilliantly woven together. By the way these books were written by a Belgian man, Hergé, apparently between 1929 and 1983.

I was really worried that it would be done badly, but I loved it and I kept laughing. I loved seeing how the characters came to life, but looked somehow exactly like the way Hergé drew them. I recognized panels! I loved the small references were woven in. I loved seeing Captain Haddock come up, fist pumping, yelling "Thundering Typhoons!"

I also loved the screenplay in the preview, where it did a sort of pantomime video like the cartoons. I think that might come from some sort of Tintin TV series that I only saw a tiny bit of once.

( ok spoiler )

Finally, fan service for geeks like me instead of geeks who read all the X-men and so on! And /good/ fan service at that. I am impressed. My whole family decided to go on Mom's whim, though my sister's had it on our to-do list for months. I am glad.

I've started talking in random conversations, about my hopes that Occupy Wall Street represents, or will make, a cultural shift about the merits of being rich in the US. This video ends along those lines but says more useful things overall, and isn't always so abstract.

Here's more on "hoping Elizabeth Warren really is that awesome."

She said it: "
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own." And explains. The sort of thing I think of so often that it must be common sense, and is in fact what I would imagine people would say all the time. Except I don't hear it for some reason, I only hear ludicrous claims about what "freedom" is. Is that just me being under a rock? Or has it really not been said much until recently?

So the only question is what she can *do*. As Senator...one hopes...

I'm about to pick up a cat on Wednesday. Her name is Flux and she belongs to ophblekuwufu's parents. Would anyone like to be on a filter in which I gush and/or complain and/or study this new cat, who is also going to be my first pet? If enough people opt in I will do this.

Fortunately I have two roommates (gone right now) who really want a cat, and one new one who is here who has experience with cats. Also I've met Flux and like her.

gleameil told me today that Diana Wynne Jones died in March. That is a blow that stings with surprising sharpness.

Diana Wynne Jones, I was hoping to meet you someday. I am glad that you presumably got one piece of fanmail from me, through our mutual friend sdn, in which I explained that I talked about your books with gleameil in our first chance meeting, and it was this shared enthusiasm that helped form the tenuous start to a precious friendship. She and I started talking today about the strange beauty of "Fire and Hemlock", and the interesting but different emotions the characters seem to experience. I love many of your books, especially the happy and humorous ones, but "Fire and Hemlock" still calls up meditative beauty in my mind. As others have said, your books are a warm assurance that oddball people are the most likely to have superpowers. I also think it's awesome that you mentored Neil Gaiman.

I am sorry for your loss, and sad to have missed you.

I'd heard the phrase "war on women" used recently and thought it was hyperbole; looking at the article below, I'm actually scared. Trigger warning: repeated mention of forced childbirth, and failing to deal with medical emergencies. No seriously, looking at it made me shudder.
The GOP house is waging war on women and poor people.

( trigger for childbirth: scary things I learned that make me shudder more )

These cookies (easily made vegan) are strange and not very sweet, but very nice. They don't even seem to need a pinch of salt, which is surprising. I was entertained by the way the sourdough starter fluffed up when the baking soda was stirred in. (khab_rmb wanted me to use sourdough starter for cookies. I'm no longer sure why, since when I asked to use some starter she had to make extra, rather than have me use up extra. But anyway, yummy!)